Greetings from Anaheim, California where I have just been rolled out the door of the Natural Products Expo West after 4.5 hours of eating my way through the 5 rooms and a gajillion booths of convention. It was kinda the best day ever: not only did I get to meet the people who make the products that change my life, but I got to snack on said products and taste brand new ones! There was even a special surprise at the end. So here for you, is the highlight reel in photo blogeristic style (my apologies for the sub-par pics due to iPhone 3GS).

Part I: Cheeese Wars

Follow Your Heart One of my first stops on the Expo Express was at Follow Your Heart, inconveniently out of snacks until my 4th visit. I finally got to taste their cheesecake, which was really yummy, their new line of vegan dressings (caesar!), and toasted cheezy bread. Yum.

Daiya I was excited to find the Daiya booth and try their new Pepperjack flavor in the form of a quesadilla slice. It’s definitely got a li’l kick! No softballs from this SuperVegan, I asked the Daiya representative why o why are their bags not re-sealable? He told me that 8 oz bags don’t need to be, cause it’s not enough product to warrant it. I disagreed. I don’t know about you, but I don’t usually use a $5 bag of Daiya all at once. Then he gave me a story about a zipper being cost prohibitive. That the price of a seal that does the re is so exorbitant it’d make the resale price (even more) impossibly expensive. Hmm… I asked about slices or blocks in addition to shreds. If I want a grilled cheese, shreds are a messy, wasteful, pain, I explained. He said they aren’t working on that, but they are working on a version of their cheeses that are meant to eat cold. Weird. I also got to eat some pizza and a spoonful of mac ‘n’ cheese.

On Feb. 8, I went to the Tribeca Grand for the first screening of Chow Down, a documentary that shows the turnaround that two men with heart disease achieved by switching to a plant-based diet. (By turnaround I mean that they didn’t die.) If you’re looking for an outreach tool that comes from a health perspective, this is it. Doctors like Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., Neal Barnard and Joel Fuhrman, as well as T. Colin Campbell, lay the facts out on the table, including the discovery that nutrition controls the expression of certain genes, including those that govern disease. The movie also addresses the government’s complicity in Americans’ nutrition-poor diet and the hold big-money interests like the meat and dairy industries have over what we’re told we should eat.

The editing was a little choppy in places—for example, there were supposed to be three participants, but the third, a woman, dropped out, and no other explanation was given except that she just couldn’t do it right then. But overall the movie delivered its message with simplicity, humor and truth.

Because it doesn’t address the cruelty issue, it was followed by a screening of Glass Walls, narrated by Paul McCartney. It was at this point that a lot of people left the room, while the rest of us covered our eyes and tried to plug up our ears. Make no mistake: This seven-minute film pulls no punches and is extremely explicit about what happens to the animals we use for food. I’d recommend this as an outreach tool, but most vegans aren’t able to sit through it, so I can’t imagine any guilty omnivores sticking it out. Continue Reading…

Time was, if you were a foodie and wanted to see food being prepared by someone other than yourself, you’d have to go online or wait for a live version of a TV show to take place at a venue near you. Because if Food Network stars even heard the word “vegan,” they’d run from you. But supposedly, tomorrow night at 9pm, there will finally be something on the Cooking Channel for the rest of us: The Veg Edge.

Now, I say supposedly because when’s the last time a vegan cooking show actually aired on a food-centric channel? Maybe I’m just being paranoid, but the show’s link isn’t working, and that makes me a little nervous. That said, the episode description intrigues: “The Veg Edge journeys the country unearthing a new breed of vegetarians. From a punk rock vegan in L.A. to vegetable-loving firemen deep in the heart of Texas to a kickboxing chef who serves up meatless Mondays at his high-end NYC restaurant.” And some of the recipes sound amazing—Chocolate Mousse Served in Edible Chocolate Dessert Cups With Raspberry Sauce, anyone?—while others come from decidedly familiar sources. Speaking of which, anyone know who the other featured vegheads will be?

If you forget to set your DVR—or if for some reason the show doesn’t air…—there’s something new online, too. Howard Stern sidekick Robin Quivers just launched her own vegan cooking show, Vegucating Robin, where chef Gavan Murphy teaches her how to incorporate variety into her diet.

But back to the Edge: Now that one vegan show has slipped through the Cooking Channel cracks, will an avalanche of them follow, or is this a one-shot deal? A vegan can hope!

Vegan poster-girl Alicia Silverstone told UsMagazine.com that on occasion she might eat a piece of cheese. “If I was at a party and there was a tray of cheese sitting there and I had had drinks, then I might have a bite. …It’s human. It’s a really good reminder that sometimes you need to have what you remember is this good thing. Because then you have it, and you’re like, ‘Actually that wasn’t better than the recipes in my book,'” Silverstone told Us.

And that’s a problem. But not because Alicia sometimes might occasionally/accidentally/drunkenly/whateverly eat a piece of cheese.

Listen, I’m no purist. If you tell me you knowingly scarfed down a pack of Linden’s cookies on a seven-hour flight, I won’t be all, “YOU ARE NOT A VEGAN, MILK-FAT CONSUMER!!! AND HEY, WHAT ARE THOSE SHOES MADE OF? DO I DETECT LEATHER?!” In fact I’m high-fiving everyone, including Alicia, whose lifestyle is mostly vegan or moving in the vegan direction, and mostly not supporting needless suffering, environmental destruction, and the decline of individual and public health. But as vegans trying to proliferate veganism into the mainstream, it’s our responsibility to make clear to an overwhelmingly ignorant public why veganism is the best choice, not treat the subject all willy-nilly-let’s-go-eat-some-mozzarella-sticks. The masses love to pick at what they perceive as inconsistencies in the behavior of people who want to convince them of real, hard facts. I can just imagine some insecure meat-eater saying, “Hey, even Alicia Silverstone indulges in delicious, inimitable cheese! That means she’s not vegan and she hates cows, and therefore all vegans are hypocrites, so let’s pour cow fat on them, light a match, and celebrate by eating steaks wrapped in bacon!”

Alicia, please don’t make us all look like floozies. As a celebrity with wide influence, you more than any of us mere mortals have to make veganism look good and sensical. Do you really need to eat cheese to remind yourself of why you don’t? (When I’m having a weak moment I just pick up Skinny Bitch or visit PETA‘s website and mosey over to the dairy cows section.) Or, hey, if you really need to eat cheese once a month–and I bet you don’t–, how about you just do it in the privacy of your own home where you’re not setting a bad real-life example for other humans who take cues from you like you’re still Cher and not tell a national magazine about it in a poorly veiled attempt to promote your book?

The best figurehead for conscientious eating will keep in mind what’s best for farm animals, the environment, and the vegan movement, and that means making it look easy and right. Alicia, I want you to continue to be that person, so please, bring some Daiya to the next cocktail party. Or maybe a dish made from a recipe in this great vegan cookbook you might have heard of, The Kind Diet.

Speaking of, I couldn’t help but notice that Pamela Anderson’s recent Peta ad–the one that was banned in Canada-–looks so darn similar to the cover of The Sexual Politics of Meat. I know the Canadians got hot and bothered about it (a Montreal official explained that the city’s decision was based on being pro-equality, not puritanical) but the image wasn’t all that shocking in my opinion–more a riff on the book cover. So I thought I’d check in with Carol and PETA and get their takes on the ad.